Two high profile female hostages held in Colombian rebel jungle camps for six years have been freed after a Venezuelan-backed rescue mission.

The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that Clara Rojas, 44 and Consuelo Gonzales, 57, had been handed over to their officials and were on their way by helicopter to the Venezuelan capital.

President Hugo Chavez triumphantly announced the news after speaking to the women by satellite phone after they were handed over by representatives of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the country’s largest rebel group.

The news was a major vindication for Mr Chavez, who had staked his reputation as an international statesman on persuading his Marxist compatriots in the Farc to let the hostages go. An earlier attempt to secure the hostages release fell apart at the eleventh hour on New Year’s Eve.

“They are free. I told them both, ‘Welcome to life,’” Mr Chavez told reporters in Caracas, from where the Red Cross helicopters had been dispatched to pick up the hostages.

The mission was launched after rebels contacted Mr Chavez early this morning with the co-ordinates of the landing site where the handover would take place.

It was the most important hostage release in the Colombian conflict since 2001, when the Farc freed some 300 soldiers and police officers. The group still holds some 46 high-profile hostages including three American defence contractors and the French-Colombian former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, who was taken along with Ms Rojas, her aide.

The rebels had previously promised to free Ms Rojas and Ms Gonzalez in time for the New Year, along with Ms Rojas’s three-year-old son Emmanuel, fathered by a rebel commander.

News of Emmanuel’s existence came to light last year when an escaped hostage reported seeing Ms Rojas, an aide to the kidnapped Franco-Colombia presidential Candidate Ingrid Betancourt, nursing the boy.

But it later emerged that the rebels backed out of the deal because they no longer had Emmanuel in their custody. The child was left two years ago in the temporary custody of rebel go-between, Jose Crisanto Gomaz, who took him to hospital when he fell seriously ill from severe malnutrition while in the jungle.

Doctors, suspecting child abuse, handed the child to social services in Bogota who placed him with foster parents.

In late December last year, Mr Gomez sought government protection, saying the rebels had threatened to kill him if he did not return the boy to them by December 30 ahead of the deadline.

By then, the district attorney’s office was investigating whether the child was Emmanuel Rojas after receiving anonymous phone calls. DNA testing later proved the boy was Ms Rojas’s son. It is unknown as yet whether Ms Rojas, if freed, will demand custody of her child.